The present invention pertains to a device for cutting to length and feeding strips for a book case maker.
In a case maker that operates in accordance with the horizontal processing principle [Liebau, Heinze; “Industrielle Buchbinderei;” Beruf and Schule Publishing, 1997; p. 399 ff.], cover boards and a spine strip of pasteboard or cardboard are joined with the blanks to be covered that are provided with glue in a roll-down device, in an accurately registered fashion. A case maker of this type is also illustrated and described in DE 100 57 599 A1. The cover boards are removed from a board magazine and fed to the roll-down device after they are laterally aligned on guide rails together with the spine strip. The spine strip used may consist of a flexible center strip roll that is cut to the appropriate length and width in the machine or a pre-cut board strip that is introduced into the feed plane of the cover boards immediately before the roll-down process. The blank to be covered is moved into the roll-down plane by means of a blank cylinder synchronous to the board feed. The protruding edges of the book case are subsequently turned in successively arranged work stations, either in a throughfeed mode or a while the respective book case is at a standstill, wherein the edges protruding on the head and the foot are usually turned in first and the edges on the sides are then turned in after turning in the corners. The book cases are ultimately guided between pressing rollers of a rub-down device in order to rub the board pieces down onto the blank to be covered. In a delivery section, the finished book cases are transported to a manual removal station in the form of stacks by means of a roller conveyor.
In known case makers of this type, the flexible center strip roll is unwound from a supply roll adjacent to the board feed and cut to width by means of rotary knives. The center strip reaches a center strip conveying device arranged between the board magazine and the roll-down device after several deflections with a dancer roll, wherein the center strip conveying device features a pull-off roller system for advancing the material web by a length equal to the spine height in a cyclic fashion. A section is cut to length by means of a cutter and introduced into the board feed plane in the form of a spine strip with other means.
During a format change, the width sizing of the center strip web is manually adjusted to another spine width, wherein it is also possible, if applicable, to change to another center strip roll in order to reduce the waste. The center strip roll that was already cut to width can no longer be used and needs to be disposed of after advancing the material web by several meters until the new width arrives on the center strip conveying device. Although a shift of the width sizing into the vicinity of the center strip conveying device would reduce the amount of waste during a format change, it would also impair the accessibility and require a more complex solution for removing the waste from the width sizing area. It is furthermore disadvantageous that significant quantities of center strip material are already cut off during the width sizing alone such that an automation of the center strip width, in which a broad range of different center strip widths is obtained from one center strip roll, is uneconomical.